Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, who leads the liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, released a video attacking Elon Musk. Musk, who owns Tesla and runs the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), targeted Christian charities that facilitate illegal immigration. The woke Lutheran dramatically invoked the story of a Christian martyr killed for his faith to bolster her argument.
The controversy started when Gen. Mike Flynn, who previously served as an advisor to President Trump, made a post to his X account. “Lutheran Family Services and affiliated organizations receive massive amounts of taxpayer dollars,” he posted. Flynn added, “This use of “religion” as a money laundering operation must end.” He attached a spreadsheet to his post, which chronicled the size of the corruption. He found that the government gave the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service $367,612,906.
The retired general concluded his remarks, “These entities are receiving huge sums, which raise serious questions about how taxpayer funds are being spent and who’s benefiting. It’s time to hold these organizations accountable. American taxpayers deserve transparency. Enough is enough!” In response, Elon Musk added, “The DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.”
Global Refuge, one of the organizations named in the original post, responded quickly. Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the CEO, said she “condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the false accusations being lodged against our humanitarian work.” She followed up by saying, “As a faith-based nonprofit, we have proudly served legally admitted refugees and immigrants for more than 85 years. ”
In her video addressing the scandal, Bishop Elizabeth Eaton stated, “Despite misinformation and baseless doubt cast today on funding that supports Lutheran organizations across our country, the ELCA remains steadfast in our commitment and work with our many Lutheran partners and expressions of our church” She added, “The ELCA is also concerned for other faith-based communities and organizations who have similarly come under attack.”
Eaton retold the story of the Roman bishop Saint Lawrence. She recounted how the Emperor demanded the bishop turn over his church’s money. However, Lawrence instead sold everything to feed the poor. She said when the emperor confronted the saint he explained that the “hungry, the poor, the naked, the stranger in the land, the most vulnerable. These are the treasures of the Church.” She ended her dramatics by saying, “He was martyred for that. Be of good courage, Church, and let us persevere.”
The Lutherans are not the only denomination that has opposed Trump’s immigration reforms. In response to an executive order that would allow ICE to detain migrants at churches, one catholic official said, “We find it unacceptable that undocumented persons might be intimidated from going to a church and thereby exercising their right to the practice of religion.”
Watch Bishop Elizabeth Eaton’s Over the Top Rant Here:
“Our churches teach that our doors must be open to all who wish to embrace our religious practices — an essential element of our constitutional right to the free exercise of religion,” the Bishop explained. “To impede, or threaten to impede, our brothers and sisters from worshipping with us based solely upon their immigration status would entail a government interference in our own citizen’s religious practice, preventing our members from fulfilling their God-given mission.”
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